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21 December 2023

Women @ RopesTalk: Conversation With Marjorie Goux, Rodan & Fields (Podcast)

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Ropes & Gray LLP

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Ropes & Gray is a preeminent global law firm with approximately 1,400 lawyers and legal professionals serving clients in major centers of business, finance, technology and government. The firm has offices in New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and Seoul.
On this episode of Women @ RopesTalk, hosted by IP transactions partner Megan Baca, capital solutions and private credit partner Alyson Gal interviews Marjorie Goux, chief legal officer at Rodan & Fields.
United States Corporate/Commercial Law

On this episode of Women @ RopesTalk, hosted by IP transactions partner Megan Baca, capital solutions and private credit partner Alyson Gal interviews Marjorie Goux, chief legal officer at Rodan & Fields. Marjorie shares what it's like to be CLO at a skincare and haircare company, along with how she prepared to take on the role. She looks back on the "multiple stops" in her legal career, including practicing law at medium- and big-sized firms in London and the U.S. before going in-house to roles at Hewlett-Packard, Clorox and Glad Products. Marjorie describes herself as a "person who looks for opportunities." Along those lines, she shares helpful networking strategies for lawyers at all stages of their careers.

Transcript:

Megan Baca: Welcome and thank you for joining us on our latest installment of Women @ RopesTalk, a podcast series brought to you by the Women's Forum at Ropes & Gray. I am Megan Baca, a partner at Ropes & Gray with a practice focusing on intellectual property, life sciences and technology transactions, and I am also co-head of the firm's digital health initiative and managing partner of our Silicon Valley office. On this episode, I am joined by my colleague, Alyson Gal, who is based in Boston.

Hi, Alyson—let's kick things off. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and provide an overview of your practice.

Alyson Gal: Thanks, Megan. I am a partner in Ropes's capital solutions and private credit practice. A large part of my practice is representing companies, lenders and groups of lenders in financings or debt restructurings that have a bespoke character or occur in a challenging or stressed environment—I often work with our restructuring colleagues in those situations. Also, I work on intellectual property-focused financing transactions such as synthetic royalty deals and clinical trial financings—those are the sorts of things I work with you on, Megan.

Megan Baca: Yes, it has been great to work together on royalty deals. Who is the special guest that you will be interviewing on this episode?

Alyson Gal: Our guest today is Marjorie Goux. Marjorie is the general counsel of Rodan & Fields, one of our clients and someone I have gotten to know well in the course of working with the company.

Megan Baca: What would you say is most notable about Marjorie and her career?

Alyson Gal: In getting to know Marjorie—and why I thought she would be a really great guest for this podcast series—is the way that she has grown by making the most of her opportunities and being open to growing in varied directions to take on new challenges. She is so wonderful at fostering connections and is just a terrific example of how being a positive, kind and outgoing person can be a great career strategy, as well as being a terrific way to live your life.

Megan Baca: That is so great. With that, I will turn it over to you and Marjorie.

Alyson Gal: Hi, Marjorie. Can you introduce yourself to our listeners?

Marjorie Goux: Hi, Alyson—thank you. It is so great to be here with you today, talking about legal careers and all of those things that attach to that. I am Marjorie Goux, I am the chief legal officer at Rodan & Fields.

Alyson Gal: For those unfamiliar with Rodan, what kind of a company is Rodan & Fields and what are your responsibilities as chief legal officer?

Marjorie Goux: We are a premium skincare company. Actually, I should say we are a skincare and haircare company, having most recently launched a whole new category of haircare.

As the chief legal officer, I sit on the C-suite executive team. We are responsible for guiding strategy with the company. I have a team that, at times, has ranged from 10 to 18 members, with around five attorneys and other legal professionals, as well as some external full-time contracting resources.

Alyson Gal: I should say, in full disclosure, that I not only work with you, Marjorie, but I am also a client. I use the skincare products and I have started using the haircare products as well. I can attest that they are wonderful, and I get many compliments!

Marjorie, to kick off, can you tell us how did you come to be in your current position?

Marjorie Goux: I was lucky to have met through some nonprofit board work at an organization called Envision Education some partners at Spencer Stuart who were involved on the recruiting side. They were aware of my interest in taking on a broader role as either a general counselor or a chief legal officer, and a position at Rodan & Fields opened up. And so, through a series of conversations, I ended up in this position.

Alyson Gal: What would you say are your goals in being a chief legal officer of an operating company? What are you trying to accomplish day to day?

Marjorie Goux: The chief legal officer does not just sit back and not do anything—we are actually grinding out some work as well. How do you do that? It is a very different role. You have to have time for strategic work. You have to have time for execution.

The relationship-building aspects of being in a C-suite position are paramount. You have to make sure that you know what people need from you and that you know what you can offer them. You develop mutual expectations and goals in a way that respects a diversity of approaches across the team and across the board.

Alyson Gal: One thing I have always wondered about, Marjorie—just how can one prepare to be a general counsel?

Marjorie Goux: I don't think that anyone is prepared for taking on the general counsel or chief legal officer role in the truest sense of knowing exactly what they are going to be doing.

Each organization has a unique set of factors going on within it that will require the attention of the chief legal officer. Everyone will have a different CEO to work with and partner with on the business. And everyone will have a different board that they will be managing up to and reporting to.

The chief legal officer does not just report to the CEO, they also report to the board on different matters from time to time.

Alyson Gal: Were there specific things that you did when you first got the position that helped you to hit the ground running?

Marjorie Goux: I was very lucky when I joined Rodan & Fields in that we had, as a business partner, Deloitte. They had a chief legal officer workshop for new chief legal officers that they provide to their clients. I spent two days working with five or six of their consultants exclusively on how you do this thing, and how you take on such a vast array of oversight responsibilities and day-to-day work.

Alyson Gal: That sounds like a terrific program. Anything else that helps you on an ongoing basis?

Marjorie Goux: I would say that tapping into my peer networks and joining things like TechGC and Women's General Counsel Network—those were huge resources for me. And just asking a lot of questions, developing a really clear 30-, 60-, and 90-day plan, and making sure that the expectations set out in that plan are clearly aligned with your CEO. The other thing that I would suggest is actively seeking out 360-degree feedback at some junctures in that first year, which I did, and that was incredibly helpful.

That is how I came to be here and how I held on through those first 12 months of learning how to do this thing.

Alyson Gal: How have things been at the company lately? Have there been any interesting challenges that you have had to navigate?

Marjorie Goux: Life at a skincare company is never dull—there are always a lot of interesting things happening.

In skincare and haircare (any consumer products) and also particularly in the cosmetics space, we have to keep a keen eye on regulatory issues. Increasingly, different ingredients are regulated in ways that support consumer health, and traditionally some of that regulation has not been happening. So, we have the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act ("MoCRA") come through, and our team has been busy preparing for some new disclosures and filings that will be required with the federal government that, again, will be helpful for consumer protection.

You might think in skincare, we are just focusing on the products, but there is plenty of corporate work going on, and we have had a couple of strategic resets during the time I have been here.

There is never a dull moment—I have really been enjoying the work.

Alyson Gal: Can you talk a bit about how you work with a board and how the board supports you?

Marjorie Goux: While I give a lot of support to the company and to my team, I receive a lot of learning in return. As well as just managing the day to day in the company and strategy for the business, I also work with this incredible board who has a vast well of experience and is very generous with providing us with learnings always on a go-forward basis as we try to create more success and value.

Alyson Gal: That sounds really exciting, Marjorie.

Stepping back, I have always been quite intimidated by the idea of being a chief legal counsel, either at a fund or a company, because I know you have to field everything that is thrown at you. How does a person approach their career so as to equip themselves to take on a role like yours?

Marjorie Goux: My career is not typical, I would say, of a corporate attorney. I started my studies in chemistry and was interested in becoming potentially a patent attorney.

I had sort of a geographic plot twist following my undergraduate studies at the University of Washington in chemistry and family circumstances had me living in London. So, I went to law school in England and attended University College London (UCL).

I was extremely lucky to start my legal career there with one of the medium-sized commercial firms, Titmuss Sainer, that is now Dechert, and then moved to Baker McKenzie, so really working with big law. All throughout that time period, I was solely specialized in intellectual property and, in fact, helped reboot the trademark practice at both firms.

Alyson Gal: How long did you practice in London?

Marjorie Goux: I moved back to the United States after a decade in London to Palo Alto, with Baker McKenzie again, in their intellectual property practice.

When I was at Baker McKenzie, I felt like to be the best intellectual property attorney, I wanted to work in a niche subject matter boutique firm. So, I spent some time at Finnegan Henderson, which is one of the premier IP firms in the United States—highly specialized with sophisticated IP work across all fronts, but something was still missing.

Alyson Gal: When did you make the transition from law firm practice to working in-house?

Marjorie Goux: I was very fortunate to have been recruited by a client, Hewlett-Packard, and moved into the Hewlett-Packard Company. At the time, they had not yet split into two. We acquired Compaq while I was there. Carly Fiorina was the CEO. It was a very interesting time for the company.

I had a wonderful mentor there, John Teach, who was the trademark counsel. Interestingly, because Hewlett-Packard was so innovation- and IP-focused, the lawyers on the IP team had really interesting work.

I built an anti-counterfeiting program that operated globally with hubs in the United States, Europe and Asia. We actually managed to raise share in the printer cartridge sector just through the work of our team.

In parallel, I was starting to build a family, moved to Oakland and realized that I wanted to work more locally to where I was going to be living with my family. And so, I had the real, true fortune of being recruited into working with the Clorox Company on their intellectual property team.

Alyson Gal: From what you have told me, your time at Clorox gave you some really important opportunities to grow and to understand your full capabilities. How did that happen?

Marjorie Goux: Shortly after I arrived, some of the work of the intellectual property team was moved to the legal team outside of the United States. So, I looked around and talked with my supervising counsel there, and we came up with a plan for what to do with my time.

Luckily, I was able to support what they had then, which was called a "new ventures group." They were doing some experimenting with small scale investing in startups outside of the company. We were also experimenting with strategic partnering through outside, externally facing brand licensing programs. Through that work, it became clear that I had a good touch for working with the business, and the business enjoyed working with me.

Laura Stein, who is now chief legal officer at Mondelez, was general counsel at the Clorox Company, and she was a firm believer in developing her attorneys in place, whether they were staying at Clorox or moving to other opportunities—she wanted to be sure that everybody had solid commercial skills.

At Clorox, there was a strong belief that each business should have its own individual leadership team, and so I was lucky to sit on the leadership teams of the businesses that I worked with. You would have the full, basic complement of what you might find in a C-suite team—the general manager, the supply chain folks, the marketing folks, the insights folks and all sorts of leaders who were moving the businesses along. All the businesses, generally speaking, were billion dollar-plus.

I was the home care attorney for a significant period of time, and then I moved to be the attorney supporting the Glad Products Company. And that is where it really kind of came into focus of having the ability to really branch out to potentially become a general counsel.

Alyson Gal: Can you talk a bit about your time at Glad Products? It sounds like you essentially became a general counsel to that joint venture.

Marjorie Goux: The Glad Products Company is a joint venture between—at least at that time, I think it still continues—Procter & Gamble and the Clorox Company, based on a set of intellectual property licenses and other commercial agreements.

It was extremely fascinating work, because we had public company employees from Procter & Gamble embedded in our Glad Products Company, and a little bit vice-versa on the R&D side. And so, we had to have a very complex web of intellectual property rights entering and flowing out of the company, as well as addressing the need to not have material nonpublic information about either company flowing to the other company via the activities in the Glad Products Company.

Also, as the lead commercial attorney for the Glad Products Company, I was able to be the secretary of the joint venture board, which was a very interesting position. The people on the board were highly ranked executives at Procter & Gamble, often the next in line for the CEO position and the lead of R&D in some global area for Procter & Gamble, and then we had our lead executives as well on that board. So, that was a very good training ground for moving out to potentially become a general counsel or a very senior attorney on the commercial side within Clorox or somewhere else outside of the company.

I want to pause there because that was a lot of information, but that is the basic groundwork for that generalist approach.

Alyson Gal: In listening to you, Marjorie, anyone listening who is a young attorney could be furiously taking notes on all of the ways that you might position yourself to have an interesting career like yours, but, of course, your career is unique. Is there anything that you can say that is of a general nature about your approach that led you to have such a great career with so many interesting and varied opportunities that helped you develop?

Marjorie Goux: I would just say, I did not expect to be in London, and I was there. I was staying longer than I thought, so I found the law school literally down the road from me—I did not realize at the time it was one of the top law schools in the U.K. And then, I found a firm that needed someone who did not have a law degree yet who could be a trademark agent. Then, I found a bigger firm that could use an American that needed to reboot their trademark practice, and so on.

What I would say in general is that in your journey, there will be multiple stops. Some of them may be unexpected, so be prepared to explore a lot of different things and to deviate from your original plan. At many points there may be an experience that might cause you to ask, "Am I in the right place?" And flip the script and ask instead, "What can I learn where I am? What can I learn from this experience?" Always look for the silver lining of whatever is happening in your life, and also realize that nobody builds their career alone.

Alyson Gal: How do you figure out what opportunities to reach for?

Marjorie Goux: It is a wonderful gift to be able to speak with people and ask for help, brainstorm, benchmark and be relatively fearless in those conversations. They do not always have to be within the organization you are in. If you feel uncomfortable having those conversations there, find a professional body, lean on your law school if you were in law school. Some people qualify outside of law school still.

Find your peers from other situations who may not even be attorneys and talk to them about how you can flip your script, and make sure you are looking on the bright side and realizing that if you are ruminating over something—a thing I like to say to myself is if I have thought about something more than three times, which I also got the three times rule from Laura Stein at Clorox—to notice you are still thinking about it and let it go, or as I like to say, sit on a cactus and move on, because you need to spark your brain to move on.

Again, always look for what you can learn in any situation where you are and make the best of it.

Alyson Gal: I think that is so helpful, constructive and relevant, because I know that people starting out in their careers are so worried about needing to plan it out and see how their career is going to unfold. Were you like that at the beginning, or have you always been a person who is able to, I guess, make the best and look for the best in the situation they are in, and still look for opportunities?

Marjorie Goux: I have always been the latter, that person who looks for opportunities. I once was assigned a mentee in one of my past lives. I sat down with them and said, "What can I do to help you think about your career, and how do you think about it?" And that person laid out, "Here is how my plan is working." He had planned everything from his undergraduate degree all the way through to what that position was going to bring to his portfolio of skills and where he was moving next. I thought to myself, "Boy, he really does not need anything from me." I was never the planner, but I have always been, I guess, what I would call a "seeker."

Alyson Gal: I guess it would be interesting to see whether that young person's career actually played out the way that he had thought it was going to.

Marjorie Goux: It has played out well, I can tell you that much. It has played out well. Everyone has their own approach, but I think you still always need to look for what you can learn from wherever you are.

Alyson Gal: You have talked a bit about the mentors that you have had and the efforts that you have made to mentor others. What would you say is the key to being a good mentee? That is, how do you position yourself—since we will have younger people listening, I think—to be a person who attracts good mentoring?

Marjorie Goux: I think you need to be open to having good conversations with anyone you think might be a potential mentor. Maybe even find some mentoring programs so you could have a structured practice of this—and coming prepared to mentoring conversations with specific questions. You may have mentors in different areas of your life who are not all the same people.

Just realize that when someone is providing a mentoring resource, most likely they have some level of accomplishment that means they will be busy, and so, you really want to respect their time and respect their wisdom. You may not always act on everything that you hear from a mentor, but usually in those conversations, you will attract a kernel of good information and maybe feedback. Depending on the strength of your relationship with the mentor, it could be feedback you don't want to hear but need to hear.

And so, establishing a trusting relationship begins, I think, in mentoring with a lot of respect—that goes both ways, but particularly from the mentee towards the mentor. And just set expectations. I have had mentoring relationships that were set up from the beginning as only two meetings, and they would be very specific.

Alyson Gal: Have you had any experience establishing structured mentoring programs?

Marjorie Goux: As part of being a leader in the Women's Enterprise Resource Group at Clorox, we set up speed mentoring, so people could have short, quick conversations with a bunch of different people. And we also had a longer-term mentoring program that we structured in the way that I am talking about. So, you sit down with the person, you talk about: How many times are we going to meet? Do we want to meet over coffee? Should we have lunch? Should we have just a regular meeting time during the business day? Here are the topics that I would be seeking advice on—are you willing and able to provide input on those topics?

Then, I would say that over the years, I developed some informal mentoring relationships that became pretty profound in my life. I met one of the founding partners for one of the big legal search firms, MLA Global, when I was working at Baker McKenzie in London. He and I stayed in touch throughout all of my career.

At Baker McKenzie, we took in associates in classes, and we also had classes of practice groups. Some of my best friends in the world are people that I started my trademark practice work with at Baker McKenzie, and they are all throughout the world—I have stayed in touch with them for many years. For me, it has been super valuable to stay in touch with people that I have met along my journey and share news of each other's developments, family life, professional life and celebrating one another—I think that is deeply important.

Alyson Gal: Marjorie, you have a very busy life. You have a family to which you devote attention. You have a challenging and interesting work environment. How do you stay in touch with your relationships, both professional and personal? Just how do you make time to do that? Do you have any tips or suggestions for the rest of us?

Marjorie Goux: One thing I would say: never underestimate the power of a handwritten note. Send letters. I think maybe I am a little bit of a romantic throwback to the day of letters, but I still believe in sending letters to people. It is a nice surprise, it gets their attention, and it is just a gentle way to say, "Hello."

Alyson Gal: That is such a nice idea! What about social media—is that part of the picture? What other avenues do you use to be in touch with people?

Marjorie Goux: I think that I have to thank Meta for Facebook. It is a way that people stay in touch—appropriately personal, so not everyone you know is going to be on your Facebook page, hopefully. And then, folks that you want to retain professional relationships with you can do that very handily through LinkedIn and—avoid the sharing on LinkedIn that is less professional, I think, nowadays, but—really use it as a way to build and stay in touch with your network.

Also, professional organizations are important. I belong to ChIPs, which is an organization of women intellectual property lawyers. I belong to TechGC, which is an organization of general counsel and other senior attorneys in the tech industry. I am a HiPower executive—it is a group of women who came together and formed an organization that has grown through what we call "rings," cohorts of women who go through a year-long leadership training. The point of that group is to bring women along in a way that we call "from success to significance," and what that means is really focusing on your legacy and your impact in your communities.

I participate on nonprofit board work. I am particularly focused on education and literacy access for all in Oakland. Through that board work, it is not just showing up and writing a check at all—it is actually very hard work, and you will develop, again, very great and long-lasting friendships and networks.

And you can network in your hobbies. I play the piano, so I maybe network through music. There might be school items where you meet other people if you have children. If you don't have children, maybe it's another hobby. I think I come by it naturally, just staying in touch.

I do have other people I know who don't stay in touch like that with all of the people they have come across, but I guess it takes a certain interest in people. Even if you wanted to be strictly self-serving you could stay in touch with people, but I find a real richness and joy in knowing people and sharing the joy of their life with them, and the hardships.

Alyson Gal: It sounds like you throw yourself fully into everything that you do.

To touch on a topic that is very hot right now, and for good reason: diversity, equity and inclusion. It sounds like you had just naturally the opportunity to work in some pretty diverse settings, but have you seen things—just to call to folks' attention—about the importance or challenges of having a diverse environment?

Marjorie Goux: I think diversity comes in all different fashions. It can be thought partnering, it can be cultural, it can be ethnic, it can be neurodiversity, it can be gender diversity, it can be centered around religion, sexuality and politics—all of the different things that people bring to the table. When you have an environment that creates psychological safety and trust for everyone there, and you have things like sensitivity training, if needed, for folks who just are not getting it, and you bring everyone along, certainly in a business environment, the organization will thrive better. In a nonprofit environment, it is the same thing. You can never relax into thinking that it has all been solved. If you hear anyone who speaks out in a way that makes anyone uncomfortable, you need to call it out, and you need to figure out how to call it out in a way that continues the trust and psychological safety environment.

I think that DEI, for me, it has just been woven in the background of my life. Having said that, it has not always been woven into everyone's background, and so, I would also say when you come across someone who is earlier in their journey, have empathy and try to see how you can help and support so that they understand that it truly is needed. It is not just a current social movement—it is something that the world has to come to accomplish uniformly, or we are going to have real problems in the future just on a global level, let alone on a business level.

Alyson Gal: Thank you so much for sharing your experiences and your perspective.

One last question: What would you say is the most important piece of advice that someone has given you? I think that would be really nice to hear, given how successful you have been at having a wonderful career and wonderful relationships along the way.

Marjorie Goux: I think where I would land on that question is: always be present to what is in front of you and try to worry less about what just happened or what is to come, because if you can find the joy and benefit, even heartache, in what is in front of you, it is important to be there in that moment. Because time moves quickly, and that moment will give you learning. You can take that forward with you, and that learning may also help you let go of anything that just happened or happened in the past that is still troubling you.

Alyson Gal: That is great—I am going to write that down and try to implement it in my own life. It has been a pleasure to talk to you, Marjorie. I am really grateful that you came on our podcast series and that you shared your experiences with us.

Marjorie Goux: Thank you. It is always a pleasure to speak with you, Alyson. I enjoy working with you and I think you are a wonderful human, and I am glad that you like our products.

Alyson Gal: I do—I am glowing! Thanks a lot.

Megan Baca: Alyson and Marjorie, thank you both so much. And as always, thanks to our listeners. For more information about Ropes & Gray's Women's Forum and our women attorneys, please visit ropesgray.com/women. You can also subscribe to this series wherever you typically listen to podcasts, including on Apple and Spotify. Thanks again for listening.

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